The importance of ICT in terms of skill development, education and future employability for young generations have been more visible these past few years. Educators and trainers are being equipped with proper ICT tools, designed for activities aimed at digital literacy for young children and specified in developing digital skills and competencies as well as ensuring education on safe social media use. Excessive use of ICT technology, however, has proven to be quite dangerous from time to time. If there is no monitoring, threats can grow larger, and it could be too late to identify.
The use of ICT and social media on young children varies. It depends on many different factors, the most important one being family background. Through proper education and right ICT tools, children will not only be able to protect themselves from potential social media threats but they will also develop the skills and competencies that they will need for future employment.
EU calls addressed to ICT skills
The importance of ICT skills for young has not gone unnoticed by the EU. This is why the impact of technological transformations for children is one of the most important open calls under the RIA Research and Innovation action, CSA Coordination and support action.
According to the European Union, there are two key competencies for lifelong learning. Digital competence and a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. Every aspect of the society is being invaded and transformed by the ICT, bit by bit. Economy shifts on a daily basis, based on the evolution in the ICT sector.
Regarding this call, research and innovation actions need to be present in the proposal. In particular actions in the proposal need to be focused on assessing the online behavior of children and young people, in general. Some important aspects that will require more focus will be the online content viewed and disseminated by children.
Robust methodologies for measuring and explaining long-term impacts in areas such as skills and competencies (i.e. digital and media literacy, innovation and creativity, learning and socio-emotional competencies and more specific labour market relevant skills), wellbeing and (mental) health or other relevant aspects of brain development should be developed and tested across EU level. Methodologies should focus on understanding why and how some children and adolescents benefit from ICT use while others seem to be impacted negatively. Evidence-based models identifying and analyzing at-risk groups can be developed. Proposals should take into account diversity as appropriate (age, cultural, social and economic background, gender etc.) and address the impact of ICT use on education inequalities. (Lack of) equity of access to ICT across social groups should also be considered. Children and young people should be active collaborators in the project.
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU in the order of EUR 3 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
Why choose IED as your partner?
Here in IED, we are always interested in developing and participating in cutting-edge research projects which will lead to the development of innovative products and services. For this reason, we have recruited talented digital experts whose expertise along with the community of policymakers, researchers, and startuppers will contribute to the development of entrepreneurship in the field of ICT.
Under this scope, we have shaped a research idea as part of a proposal for this call. Every day huge amounts of information are produced, which people have to manage and disseminate. The great development of computers, the Internet and the media has made it possible to manage and disseminate information more efficiently and reliably. However, technological advances affect both positively and negatively.
The objective is to deal with the issues related to technological advances and mainly the use of Social Media. Our aim is to help youth gain using safe social media skills who have social, educational and financial problems. Because these target group lacks the knowledge on how to use internet consciously and in a safe manner and has a lack of information about digital life. The primary goal is to contribute to the use of a safe internet.
IED’s idea will focus on the following actions:
After the conduction of the research, concerning the effects of technological advances, high-quality training curricula will be developed with special consideration of the needs of the target group as well as countries’ specificities;
A1. Literature studies on social media
A2. Teaching e-module to use skills of safe and conscious social media
A3. Pilot testing through a series of workshops
Are you interested in submitting a proposal for this call until 14 March 2019? Do you find our idea interesting and want to have it as part of your proposal? Contact us today and make us your partner. Through our expertise we will implement this idea and bring you the best results.
